Description
While the social/health and industrial/organizational (I/O) disciplines are distinct fields in psychology, both have examined similar constructs, such as social support. Overwhelmingly, researchers have found social support has beneficial effects on physical/mental health and organizational outcomes. Most of these researchers have focused on supportive or unsupportive romantic relationships, friendships, or work relationships. A meta-analysis, however, did not find universal support of the beneficial effects of social support on health. This has led some researchers to study intermediary factors that affect the social support/health link. One such factor is the quality of one's relationships. Relationships can have both positivity and negativity, and this type of relationship has been classified as ambivalent. Social/health psychologists have found ambivalent relationships are associated with negative physical and psychological outcomes, such as increased cardiovascular reactivity (the heart's response to stress) and depression. While there is considerable research on positive or negative work relationships in I/O psychology, I could find few I/O articles looking at how both high positivity and high negativity (ambivalence) affect I/O constructs of interest. Looking to integrate the concept of social support from both social/health psychology and I/O psychology, I examined how ambivalence in work relationships impact job-related and personal/health outcomes. It was hypothesized supportive work relationships would be related to more positive job-related and personal/health outcomes (i.e., higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, supervisor support, coworker support, leader-member exchange, and life satisfaction) compared to ambivalent relationships. On the other hand, ambivalent relationships would be related to more negative job-related and personal health outcomes compared to supportive relationships. Furthermore, I examined ambivalence as a predictor over and above positive and negative relationship quality separately. It was also hypothesized as the total number of supportive work relationships increase, positive job-related and personal/health outcomes would also increase. Conversely, as the total number of ambivalent work relationships increase, more negative job-related and personal/health outcomes would also increase. Employed students (n=171) from San Diego State's undergraduate psychology research pool filled out information on workplace relationships as well as job and personal/health measures on the website Survey Monkey. Due to the exploratory nature of the current study, a variety of techniques were used to analyze the data, including ANOVA/ANCOVA, MANOVA/MANCOVA, correlations, multiple regression, and multivariate multiple regression. The hypotheses were mostly supported. The data suggested relationship ambivalence is associated with many job-related and personal/health outcomes, such as lowered job satisfaction and increased burnout. The analyses also suggest the SRI has strong construct validity as a potential work setting measure. The current study is a first step in looking for areas of overlap and identifying future research opportunities in social/health and I/O psychology with regards to social support research. In addition, the results may narrow the research-practice gap, aiding human resource professionals in leadership development and identifying problematic job or personal/health outcomes within organizations. Limitations and future directions for research are also discussed.
